Thursday, 19 January 2012

Something New for the New Year

For some time now I have been admiring the work of Sugarbelle and  when, back in November, she posted a tutorial on Baking the Perfect Sugar Cookie I promised myself that I would give it a go. She produces the most amazing tutorials on her blog and makes the art of iced biscuits look achievable even for a complete novice like me.


So here we have a stack of biscuits made to her delicious recipe & just waiting to be decorated. Watch this space for how I get on!

Tuesday, 17 January 2012

A New Year - Looking Forwards & Reflections

I can hardly believe that the last time I posted something to my sadly neglected blog it was last September. The time has flown by since then. There are never enough ours in the day and I have to admit to maintaining my facebook page (canterburycakes) in priority to my poor little blog, but my new year's resolution is to split my time evenly between them both...all good intentions!


2012 promises to be an exciting year on the cake front, as I have (slightly) more time to dedicate to learning the craft since finishing full-time work (although looking after the little people in the house is a full-time job in itself!). I have a workshop booked with the amazingly talented Lorraine McKay (which I am SO excited about), tickets booked for the Cake International show which is taking place in London and a place reserved on the British Sugarcraft Guild's skills school. I am also hoping to fit in a second professional diploma course in either royal icing or sugarpaste to compliment the one that I did last year in sugar flowers. So, hopefully I should have plenty to report back here.


2011 was an amazing year on the cake front. Given that the official start date of my business was 1st September I have had an amazing response and been kept quite busy. I have even had to turn work down because I just couldn't fit it in, which I really didn't imagine would happen so soon. I have worked on some extremely enjoyable projects which have allowed me to explore my creativity while honing my skills (often working out of my comfort zone - the best way to improve one's skills I find!). So, for my next few posts I will look back at, and share with you, some of my favourite cakes of 2011.


Lets start with this one



A good friend of mine, and her twin sister, celebrated their 40th birthday at the end of the year. I offered to make them a birthday cake as my gift to them and I was given free reign on the design. Earlier in the year I had made this cake inspired by the style of Cath Kidston:


and I really liked the idea of doing a similar cake but (hopefully) improved with the benefit of all I had learnt during the course of the year. The flowers were a joy to make and I think they finished the cake off perfectly.


Tuesday, 20 September 2011

Wonderful Wobblies by Georgie Godbold

It's been a while since my last post; Canterbury Cakes (and life in general) has been keeping me very busy. Last night I was extremely fortunate to attend a demonstration by the talented Georgie Godbold, creator of the incredibly cute Wobblies.




She demonstrated how to make a cute bunny ballerina and made it look incredibly easy (which I'm sure it isn't). I can't wait to have a go myself!





Sunday, 7 August 2011

Otto's Dinosaur Birthday Cake

The second cake I have been working on this weekend is quite a contrast to Amelia's pony cake - I was asked to do a dinosaur cake and Otto said he didn't mind what it looked like as long as it had spikes.




Hopefully this baby dinosaur will fit the remit.

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